Antiquities Trafficking Research Articles

Are Archaeologists Talking About Looting? Reviewing Archaeological and Anthropological Conference Proceedings from 1899–2019

Abstract The impetus for this study was a review of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) 86th Annual Meeting program in 2021. Finding that no single poster or presentation referenced looting or antiquities trafficking despite these issues being ethical considerations that all SAA members are expected to recognize, we sought to investigate whether this was an irregularity – perhaps due to the virtual format of the meeting – or whether it was more common than not. For a broader understanding of if, how, and where these topics are discussed by archaeologists outside of the SAA, we expanded the investigation and studied the archives of 14 other archaeological and anthropological conferences. The results of the study show that despite there being an overall increase in mentioning looting and antiquities trafficking at conferences, it remains a niche and infrequently discussed topic.1

American Politics, the American Public, and the Protection of Cultural Heritage: An Analysis of the U.S. – Cyprus Cultural Property Agreement

ABSTRACT In 1999, the United States adopted emergency restrictions on the import of Byzantine cultural material from Cyprus. That initial action has evolved into a long-standing memorandum of understanding that includes archaeological as well as ethnological materials. Recognizing the political climate in which U.S. law and the initial emergency measures were enacted and how the memorandum interacts with current social and political conditions, the authors argue that both U.S. policy and American attitudes toward antiquities trafficking and cultural heritage protection need to change.

The illicit trade in antiquities is not the world's third-largest illicit trade: a critical evaluation of a factoid

AbstractThe claim that the illicit trade in antiquities is the third largest, second only to arms and narcotics, is widely repeated. But where does this claim originate and what is the evidence for its veracity? The authors present a ‘stratigraphic excavation’ of the claim by systematically searching through academic articles, popular press and policy literature to reveal the factoid's use and reuse over the past five decades. The authors find that the claim is not based on any original research or statistics, and it does not originate with any competent authorities. The analysis demonstrates how the uncritical repetition of unsubstantiated ‘facts’ can undermine legitimate efforts to prevent looting, trafficking and illicit sale of antiquities.

Investigating antiquities trafficking with generative pre-trained transformer (GPT)-3 enabled knowledge graphs: A case study.

Background: There is a wide variety of potential sources from which insight into the antiquities trade could be culled, from newspaper articles to auction catalogues, to court dockets, to personal archives, if it could all be systematically examined. We explore the use of a large language model, GPT-3, to semi-automate the creation of a knowledge graph of a body of scholarship concerning the antiquities trade. Methods: We give GPT-3 a prompt guiding it to identify knowledge statements around the trade. Given GPT-3's understanding of the statistical properties of language, our prompt teaches GPT-3 to append text to each article we feed it where the appended text summarizes the knowledge in the article. The summary is in the form of a list of subject, predicate, and object relationships, representing a knowledge graph. Previously we created such lists by manually annotating the source articles. We compare the result of this automatic process with a knowledge graph created from the same sources via hand. When such knowledge graphs are projected into a multi-dimensional embedding model using a neural network (via the Ampligraph open-source Python library), the relative positioning of entities implies the probability of a connection; the direction of the positioning implies the kind of connection. Thus, we can interrogate the embedding model to discover new probable relationships. The results can generate new insight about the antiquity trade, suggesting possible avenues of research. Results: We find that our semi-automatic approach to generating the knowledge graph in the first place produces comparable results to our hand-made version, but at an enormous savings of time and a possible expansion of the amount of materials we can consider. Conclusions: These results have implications for working with other kinds of archaeological knowledge in grey literature, reports, articles, and other venues via computational means.

The French Connection: Charles Clermont-Ganneau and the Antiquities Trade Network in the Late Ottoman Levant

Abstract Charles Clermont-Ganneau is widely recognized by scholars for his contributions to the archaeology, epigraphy, and historical geography of Israel/Palestine and the broader Middle East. But Clermont-Ganneau was also a major contributor to antiquities trade networks between the Levant and France in the Late Ottoman period. For a period of more than 35 years, he served variously as finder, agent, consultant, buyer, and dealer of ancient artifacts of all types. This article looks at Clermont-Ganneau’s involvement in antiquities trafficking and how it was intertwined with his scholarly career. A close study of his activities suggests that Clermont-Ganneau’s career is a paradigmatic example of academic reliance on the antiquities trade.

Preserving Cultural Heritage: An Overview of Legal Framework of Illegal Trafficking of Artifacts and Antiquities

Preserving Cultural Heritage: An Overview of Legal Framework of Illegal Trafficking of Artifacts and Antiquities

Antiquities trafficking in conflict countries: A crime-mapping approach

AbstractStudies on antiquities trafficking have often been overshadowed by research looking at the trafficking of human beings, drugs, and weapons, a fact partly motivated by the arguably higher relevance and greater security implications involved in these other forms of illicit trade. However, the past decade of conflicts in the Middle East has revived an interest in the study of antiquities trafficking networks.1 The association between the growing size of the illicit antiquities market and conflicts in the region did not go unnoticed by crime scientists and criminologists looking deeper at the relation between the trafficking of antiquities and transnational organized crime.2

A deep learning approach to fight illicit trafficking of antiquities using artefact instance classification

We approach the task of detecting the illicit movement of cultural heritage from a machine learning perspective by presenting a framework for detecting a known artefact in a new and unseen image. To this end, we explore the machine learning problem of instance classification for large archaeological images datasets, i.e. where each individual object (instance) is itself a class that all of the multiple images of that object belongs. We focus on a wide variety of objects in the Durham Oriental Museum with which we build a dataset with over 24,502 images of 4332 unique object instances. We experiment with state-of-the-art convolutional neural network models, the smaller variations of which are suitable for deployment on mobile applications. We find the exact object instance of a given image can be predicted from among 4332 others with ~ 72% accuracy, showing how effectively machine learning can detect a known object from a new image. We demonstrate that accuracy significantly improves as the number of images-per-object instance increases (up to ~ 83%), with an ensemble of classifiers scoring as high as 84%. We find that the correct instance is found in the top 3, 5, or 10 predictions of our best models ~ 91%, ~ 93%, or ~ 95% of the time respectively. Our findings contribute to the emerging overlap of machine learning and cultural heritage, and highlights the potential available to future applications and research.

Criminalising the Non-return of Cultural and Historical Goods under Temporary Exportation for Combating Illegal Trafficking in Cultural Property

The author examines the policies pursued by Belarus on the prevention of international illegal trafficking in antiquities and cultural goods. Clarifications of Article 230 of the Criminal Code of Belarus are proposed. The findings and recommendations could inform the ongoing work on amendments to the Code on Culture, negotiation of international agreements, and strengthening of the safeguards for the repatriation of cultural property under temporary exportation.

Give art market regulation a chance

The article discusses the extension by Directive (EU) 2018/834 of new compliance obligations to art market participants against the background of a criminological examination of different types of laundering operations occurring in the art market. It highlights how this sector is a potential hub for ‘traditional’ money laundering operations as well as the target of antiquities trafficking which potentially finances other illicit activities such as terrorism. The relevance of an often-overlooked laundering phenomenon – cleansing operations of illegally sourced art that can be defined as art laundering – is stressed. In assessing whether introducing an anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing regime into the art market can be considered a proportionate intervention, the burden on stakeholders due to compliance obligations, on the one hand, and the need to protect values endangered by laundering and trafficking involving art, on the other is evaluated. In light of the incidence of art crimes, in particular of art laundering, and of the potential for the new rules to effectively prevent these activities due to a relatively low risk of displacement, the conclusion reached is that the interests of supra-individual values, including that of cultural heritage, outweigh the economic concerns of art market actors.

Antiquities in a time of conflict: a crime script analysis of antiquities trafficking during the Syrian Civil War and implications for conflict antiquities

The Syrian Civil War created an opportunity for increased trafficking of antiquities and has resulted in a renewed awareness on the part of a global audience. The persistence of criminal and organisational networks which facilitate antiquities trafficking networks (ATNs) has been recognised as significant, leading to increased interest in the development of new and improved methods of understanding such networks. While this field of research has traditionally been dominated by relevant areas such as archaeology, law, art and museum studies, there is a noticeable gap in crime prevention research. This paper presents a crime script of Syrian antiquities trafficking networks during the Syrian Civil War which has been generated from open source journalistic data. In creating a broad crime script for such a prevalent issue, this paper aims to demonstrate the need for further crime script analysis and specifically crime prevention research more generally within the study of antiquities trafficking.

Fool’s Gold: Fakes, Frauds, and Fallacies in Philippine History by Bob Couttie

Reviewed by: Fool’s Gold: Fakes, Frauds, and Fallacies in Philippine History by Bob Couttie Francisco Jayme Paolo A. Guiang BOB COUTTIE Fool’s Gold: Fakes, Frauds, and Fallacies in Philippine History. Vol. 1. Quezon City: Central Books, 2020. 213 pages. Fool’s Gold: Fakes, Frauds, and Fallacies in Philippine History, volume 1, is an interesting work that unravels historical misconceptions that are commonly believed to be true. Bob Couttie, the book’s author, is an independent scholar who completed courses in forensic science at the University of Strathclyde; forensic psychology at The Open University in Milton Keynes, England; forensic science and criminal justice at the University of Leicester; military ethics at the University of New South Wales Canberra; and antiquities trafficking and art crime at the University of Glasgow. His interest in Philippine history is evident in articles in his blogsite, Bob’s Histories and Mysteries. Most noteworthy is Couttie’s book Hang the Dogs: The True Tragic History of the Balangiga Massacre (New Day, 2004), a scholarly work that introduces provocative ideas about the history of the Balangiga incident during the Philippine–American War. Fool’s Gold is printed and published by Central Books, although it can also be ordered online through a dedicated Facebook page and the author’s blogsite. Couttie offers his readers a very timely work in light of the recent surge in fake news, disinformation, and cases of negative historical revisionism that are used to advance certain political interests. The author recognizes this premise early in the book: “Falsehood has been weaponised as never before and democracy and freedom and the welfare and future of everything we know and care for is under threat. It is a war on truth” (xi). A distinct feature of Couttie’s work lies in its primary aim, which is to promote reasoned argument and critical thinking by revisiting “a range of popular, often outdated, misconceptions about Philippine history” (xi). Hence, Fool’s Gold is a scholarly work that does not only rectify erroneous or misleading information but also provokes readers to have a nuanced appreciation of [End Page 319] history. In line with this idea, the author explains that “If we apply that critical thinking skill to everything we hear, read or watch then we will be better armed against the falsehoods that seek to influence us and persuade us to be complicit in our own imprisonment and oppression” (xi). To expose “fakes, frauds, and fallacies” present in existing historical knowledge, Couttie thematically divides the book into four sections that deal with various topics across Philippine history. His bias toward the history of the Philippine–American War is evident in the first section, “War Stories,” which includes seven chapters. Couttie revisits and clarifies fascinating historical facts, such as the identity of Lewis M. Johnson, the “Colonel of Artillery” who served as the lone American signatory in the Philippine Declaration of Independence (3–29), and the contradicting statistics on the supposed death toll in Samar during the Philippine–American War (67–75). The succeeding five chapters are lumped under a section titled “Myths and Legends,” in which the author interrogates timeless debates in Philippine history. These discussions include Renato Constantino’s assessment of José Rizal as an American-sponsored hero (144–70), the story of Princess Urduja and its place in Philippine lore (111–33), and even Pres. Ferdinand Marcos’s ambitious anti-typhoon rocket program (134–42). Couttie probes into manufactured historical truths in the three chapters that comprise the third section, “Fakers All.” Most intriguing in this section is the author’s examination of the Tallano wealth, which Marcos purportedly acquired prior to his political heyday. The last section, aptly titled “And Finally,” is composed of a single chapter, “Kill the Chocolate Biscuit” (205–9), which deals with the controversy of the Hispanic chocolate biscuit brand Filipinos. Indeed, Couttie leads his readers into a dense narrative that is composed of multiple layers of inquiries that identify historical falsehoods and misconceptions. The discussions are thoroughly pursued through an examination of essential literature and relevant primary documents. Ending Fool’s Gold with a section on the history of chocolate as beverage and delicacy during the Spanish colonial period is...

“We must punish the looters, but also the buyers”

The trafficking in antiquities from war zones in the Middle East has grown steadily over the past two decades. While there is international consensus on condemning this illicit trade, it remains difficult to combat it in practice. One way to stop it is to increase sanctions on buyers, says Amr Al-Azm, an archaeologist and professor of Middle East history and anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio, United States.

Exploring the “Cozy Cabal of Academics, Dealers and Collectors” through the Schøyen Collection

In the wake of the trade in ancient materials, several ethical and political issues arise that merit concern: the decimation of the cultural heritage of war-torn countries, proliferation of corruption, ideological connotations of orientalism, financial support of terrorism, and participation in networks involved in money laundering, weapon sales, human trafficking and drugs. Moreover, trafficking and trading also have a harmful effect on the fabric of academia itself. This study uses open sources to track the history of the private Schøyen Collection, and the researchers and public institutions that have worked with and supported the collector. Focussing on the public debates that evolved around the Buddhist manuscripts and other looted or illicitly obtained material from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, this article unravels strategies to whitewash Schøyen’s and his research groups’ activities. Numerous elements are familiar from the field of antiquities trafficking research and as such adds to the growing body of knowledge about illicit trade and collecting. A noteworthy element in the Schøyen case is Martin Schøyen and his partners’ appeal to digital dissemination to divorce collections from their problematic provenance and history and thus circumvent contemporary ethical standards. Like paper publications, digital presentations contribute to the marketing and price formation of illicit objects. The Norwegian state’s potential purchase of the entire Schøyen collection was promoted with the aid of digital dissemination of the collection hosted by public institutions. In the wake of the Schøyen case, it is evident that in spite of formal regulations to thwart antiquities trafficking, the continuation of the trade rests on the attitudes and practice of scholars and institutions.

Réflexions éthiques relatives à l’étude du Proche-Orient antique

L’assyriologie recouvre les disciplines qui portent sur l’étude du Proche-Orient antique, et plus spécifiquement sur la période et la zone géographique définies par l’usage de l’écriture cunéiforme. Les archéologues, historiens et historiens de l’art qui mènent des recherches dans ce domaine, travaillent dans des pays en guerre ou des pays qui ne respectent pas la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme. Ils sont confrontés à des situations qui affectent leur travail au quotidien. Pour mieux appréhender les situations, il est indispensable de maîtriser l’histoire récente de ces pays, le rôle qu’y ont joué les chercheurs occidentaux dans la redécouverte de l’antiquité, et la relation des politiques et des populations locales vis-à-vis de leur passé. En 2003, les assyriologues ont créé l’International Association for Assyriology pour mieux faire face à la situation au Proche-Orient, et depuis 2014, ils ont réagi par le biais de déclarations officielles, avant de mener une réflexion sur le comportement éthique des chercheurs. Celui-ci porte sur le respect des lois des pays objets d’étude, la coopération avec les scientifiques locaux, la formation des futures générations et le bien-être de la main-d’œuvre employée sur les chantiers de fouilles archéologiques. Il concerne les moyens à mettre en œuvre pour la sauvegarde et la restauration du patrimoine culturel, sans pour autant se compromettre avec des régimes dictatoriaux. Enfin, le comportement éthique du chercheur passe par la transmission du savoir vers le public, et en particulier l’information à destination des acheteurs potentiels du danger de contribuer au trafic des antiquités.Depuis 2003, les assyriologues se sont organisés en une association internationale pour mieux faire face à la situation au Proche-Orient, et depuis 2014, ils ont réagi par le biais de déclarations officielles et multilingues, avant de mener une vaste réflexion sur le comportement éthique des chercheurs. Celui-ci porte sur le respect des lois des pays objets d’étude, la coopération avec les scientifiques locaux et l’échange de données, la formation des futures générations et le bien-être de la main-d’œuvre employée sur les chantiers de fouilles archéologiques. Il concerne également les efforts et moyens à mettre en œuvre pour la sauvegarde et la restauration du patrimoine culturel, sans pour autant se compromettre avec des régimes dictatoriaux ou des groupes belligérants. Enfin, le comportement éthique du chercheur passe par la transmission du savoir vers le public, et en particulier l’information à destination des acheteurs potentiels du danger de contribuer au trafic des antiquités.

Anti-money laundering regulation and the art market

AbstractFollowing concerns that the art market is being used to launder criminal money and fund terrorist activities, measures have recently been introduced to subject the market to the anti-money laundering (AML) regime – such as the EU 5thMoney Laundering Directive (2018) and the US Illicit Art and Antiquities Trafficking Prevention Bill (2018). The expansion of the AML regime to include art dealers has been attributed to the failure of regulation and the vulnerabilities inherent in the market to laundering. This paper considers vulnerabilities to money laundering and examines the types of regulation that apply in the art market. The paper then goes on to analyse the application of AML criminal law and preventive measures in the UK context, demonstrating that art dealers can be criminally prosecuted for engaging in normal commercial activities. Even if dealers do comply with AML reporting rules, such compliance can significantly impact upon their business. These are important considerations given the government's emphasis on striking a balance between the burdens on business and deterring money laundering activities. Drawing upon the AGILE analytical framework, we remain sceptical about the continued expansion of the AML regime.

Forensic Archaeometry Applied to Antiquities Trafficking: The Beginnings of an Investigation at the Frontiers of Knowledge

For most of its history, archaeology has too often taken an indulgent attitude toward looting and antiquities trafficking. The primary response to these dangers has been to publish the main findings made outside of academia. As a result of this approach and the prominent role played by police techniques in investigating such crimes, investigations are primarily based on documentary research. This approach makes it harder to determine such essential factors in this field as an object’s collecting history or discovery date. This paper proposes new ways of studying collecting history, drawing on research projects on the use of archaeometry to shed light on cases of looting or trafficking involving police, court, or government intervention; hence, its qualification as “forensic”. Although the current state of knowledge does not enable the presentation of novel research, we believe that researchers and interested institutions should be made aware of the advisability of using archaeometry more directly in the fight against these scourges.

Looting, the Antiquities Trade, and Competing Valuations of the Past

Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the world, and it is widely acknowledged that despite what we know about the scale of site destruction, the reality is worse. Available evidence suggests that the scale and severity of looting are increasing. Legal and ethical remedies exist but have not proven adequate to reduce the impact of looting and antiquities trafficking. This reflects, in part, inadequate resources and uneven enforcement, and also the pressures of rising prices for antiquities, growing market demand, severe economic depression, and lawlessness, particularly in conflict zones. But it also reflects expanding ideological causes for site destruction by others, as well as competing epistemologies and deontological expectations within the discipline itself challenging the site preservation imperative in archaeology. More than ten years ago, a previous review of these topics found the response inadequate; a decade later, matters are worse.

Ancient Artifacts vs. Digital Artifacts: New Tools for Unmasking the Sale of Illicit Antiquities on the Dark Web

Since the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as Daesh and ISIL) in 2014, antiquities have been a widely publicized source of funding for what has become one of the most technologically savvy terrorist organizations of the modern era. The globalization of technology and rise of popularity in cryptocurrencies has changed the face of black-market trade and the actors that carry out these crimes. While art and antiquities have long served as a market with susceptibilities to laundering, the emergence of Dark Web markets, identification-masking software, and untraceable cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have opened new doors to potential vulnerabilities. The anonymity that is offered by these technologies acts as a roadblock for authorities, while attracting the likes of terrorists and transnational criminals. Investigative research using cyber security platforms to identify digital artifacts connected to potential traffickers provides the opportunity to unmask the seemingly untraceable actors behind these activities. The evidence of illicit antiquities trafficking on the Dark Web displayed in this article can generate a new discussion on how and where to study black-market antiquities to gain needed insight into combating the illicit trade online and the transnational criminal groups it may finance.

Who Owns the Past?

On the 23rd of August 2015 Daesh blew up the 2,000-year-old Baal-Shamin temple in the world-famous Greco-Roman site of Palmyra. This event triggered a profound emotional reaction in society at large, and the ruins soon became an iconic symbol of world heritage in danger. The appalling images of the ruins of Baal Shamin reinforced the perception, especially among western observers, that protecting cultural and natural heritage is yet another duty in the fight against terrorism. A similar international outcry occurred in 2001, when the Buddhas of Bamiyan fell to Taliban dynamite in Afghanistan, and when Iraqi museums and sites were ransacked and looted providing two of the most recent and vivid examples of destroyed heritage in the so-called War on Terror which was launched by the U.S. government after 9/11. Following the destruction at Baal-Shamin, UNESCO declared that the deliberate destruction of Syria's cultural heritage was a war crime, and put into motion several projects and actions aimed at preserving endangered Syrian archaeological heritage. At the same time, alongside income gained from the sale of drug and weapons, the trafficking of antiquities from Syria and Iraq worldwide provided a major source of revenue for Daesh.